


Portrait of a Lady

by still_intrepid



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Angst, Art, Body Image, F/F, Historical References, Humor, Identity, Implied Sexual Content, Intimacy, Life Drawing, Naked Cuddling, Nyotalia, gender expression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 15:56:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13170237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_intrepid/pseuds/still_intrepid
Summary: Over the years they were together and apart and together again, in various ways and appearances.In the present day, Lithuania and Poland invest in their relationship with some attempted nude portraiture.





	Portrait of a Lady

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kyuhu](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=kyuhu).



> a secret santa fic for kyuhu who draws these two so beautifully. the prompt I mainly took was art/painting: how they feel about old pictures of themselves, and trying to draw each other.

There was a painting, one of a hundred portraits in Warsaw Castle, of Lithuania as a young man. No one had apparently bothered to make a careful enough note of her elaborately crafted alias at the time, so “Young Man” was all it said on the painting’s description.  It wasn’t an official portrait.  The artist had just painted her the way she appeared at the Polish Court in the 1700s: a young nobleman working on state business and dancing with a certain young-despite-her-years blonde countess of indeterminate rank. Around that time, the two of them tended to change identity with each incoming monarch or three, and it was simply more convenient to be a man, for dancing with Poland, and for other reasons.

There were a few other representations of Lithuania in the Castle, and Poland too, but metaphorical ones. Like the one where their union was represented by two men passionately embracing in full armour. In reality, fully armoured embraces were  _challenging_. Or, was that supposed to be some altogether more depressing and depressingly accurate metaphor in itself?  So much for two souls one body; had they always been guarding their hearts so diligently?

There were no from-life portraits of Poland. “Not distinctive enough,” was her explanation, “I’d just be archetypal Blonde Woman, only,” she clapped her hands over her barely-there breasts, “lacking a couple of the main like cultural signifiers.” Which wasn’t fishing for a compliment: Poland was quite happy being out of step with the cultural signifiers of womanhood. “And who’d want to paint me as a boy when they had you around?” Which  _was_  fishing; most of the time if you wanted to flatter Poland you called her handsome rather than pretty.

The real reason was probably just her shyness, or the fact that she couldn’t sit still, but anyway, there was no extant portrait of Poland herself.

This was about to change.

***

“ _Naked_?” Lithuania repeated.

“Yes! The book says it’s a totally intimacy-increasing experience.”

The Book said a lot of things. The book was the reason the two of them had  _date nights_  these days, despite being officially together for over twenty years, and unofficially together for several hundred. Lithuania liked the book, but this seemed… Extreme.

“And, come on, it’ll just be fun.”

Lithuania laughed. “ _Funny_  for sure… Since when have either of us been visual artists?”

Poland waved this away. “I can’t draw for toffee, I know, but I expect if I concentrated… Anyway, the picture isn’t the point, it’s _the experience not the outcome_. The sexy sexy experience.”

“I’m not sure life drawing is actually as sexy as people think…”

“It could be!”

“You just want to recreate that scene from Titanic, don’t you?”

Poland beamed. “You’re right, I so do, how did you  _know_?”

“Well, you’ve been draping yourself over the furniture and saying  _draw me like one of your French girls_  ever since we watched the DVD.”

“Do you really actually not want to do it?” Poland asked, glancing up between her legs from her position draped over the arm of a sofa. “We don’t have to if you don’t actually want to.”

Maybe that was the relationship book talking but however Poland seemed to have internalised that little thoughtfulness, Lithuania appreciated it.

“Sweetheart,” she said, walking round to sit down beside her, “no, I um… I don’t think it’s necessarily a terrible idea. I’m just thinking about it.”

“Okay!” said Poland brightly, still upside down. “Mm, yes just think about it, think about, you know… The nudity. The bosoms. Both of them. Wait, do I have two bosoms or is it like a collective noun of breasts, we have one bosom each…?”

Poland’s sexy talk could go from sixty to zero in two seconds flat. It was adorable.

But Lithuania was now, nevertheless, thinking of it. Of Poland lounging like she was now, but naked, kicking her bare legs up in the air because as Lithuania imagined her she was silly with giggles again, trying to gaze all sultry through her lashes and sneezing as hair got in her face. She was so beautiful like that, or calmer, as in Lithuania’s other imagining, with her expression both vague and intent. And all the shape and solidity and slenderness and softness of her body in repose, and the invitation - the  _request_  - for Lithuania to stare. And Poland staring back at her, giving her her full attention in order to draw _her_ …

“Okay,” she said. “Okay, what the hell, let’s try that for our next date.”

“Eee!” Poland squealed. “I’m going to practise so your picture isn’t actually awful. Baby, thank you.”

***

Poland said: “Is that a  _wolf pelt_??”

They were back at Lithuania’s house, two weeks later. The night of the big date. 

“No, noo it’s very fake,” Lithuania reassured her. “America got it for me recently, to watch Game of Thrones with she said.”

“You’ve got just loads of blankets and stuff here!”

“Yes – well I know you feel the cold. I’ve turned up the heating as well so you should be comfortable for our artistic endeavours.”

“Aw, Liet! That’s so nice.  I love you.”

They could say now over something as casual as blankets.

Poland had claimed the bed and Lithuania the sofa opposite.

“So… do we…” Poland began.

It was feeling almost as awkward as undressing in front of each other for the first time. Perhaps awkwardness wasn’t the word. More like some combination of shortness of breath and reverential awe.

Poland pulled off her sweatshirt and t-shirt in one go.

“You’re wearing a bra!!” Lithuania exclaimed. Poland didn’t wear bras. She quoted scientific research on their inefficacy at dinner parties.

But today she was wearing one and it was red, and lacy.

“Like it? It’s pretty uncomfortable.”

“You can get bras fitted you know,” Lithuania said automatically.

Poland glared at her. “YOU only know that cos I told you, and have you ever?”

“Well…”

"I don’t need to because I only wear them for Aesthetic and Sex purposes.”

“I like you whatever underwear you wear,” Lithuania assured her. “This is certainly… aesthetic.”

“And?”

“Sexy. Obviously.”

Poland cooed, pleased. “Okay but. It feels totally weird to be taking off my own clothes at a time like this. Hint HINT.”

“Oh,” said Lithuania, “in that case…”

She hopped across and wrapped her arms around Poland, who fairly purred. Poland was always complaining of feeling cold but just then Lithuania could have sworn she felt warmth radiating from the soft skin of her arms and back and shoulders. She loved touching her so much.

Poland had just time to say,  _You’re allowed to kiss me too, you know_ …

***

“I thought we were just taking  _your_  clothes off…”

“Mmm. Yours seemed kind of indicated, you know? Anyway, you helped.”

“Oh, yeah,” Lithuania agreed. “I am quite happy with this state of affairs.”

“You could draw me naked. I mean, you could draw me naked while _you’re_ naked.”

Lithuania rolled onto her side on the bed and leaned up on one elbow. “I suppose we couldn’t just draw each other at the same time?”

“We are the lesbian ladies, dude, we totally know how to take turns!”

Lithunia laughed. Poland looked thoughtful.

“But maybe?” she said. “Actually yeah? Only, I wanted us to be lying down, like in the film. You could lie on the sofa.”

“Yeahh, they’re not going to be such great drawings if we’re drawing lying down too…”

“ _Yeahhhh_ , well not to speak for you but mine is not going to be such greatness however I do it.”

“Even after all your practising?” Lithuania couldn’t resist teasing her.

“Oh boy.” Poland rolled onto her back and told her tragic tale to the ceiling. “I looked up. All these naked people. For drawing, on the Internet, that’s thing number one, and thing number two… What’s that Simpsons quote? ‘I thought you could lip read.’ / ‘I assumed I could!’, only for lip reading take life drawing. You just draw what you see, how hard can it be? Really really hard, apparently, I apologise fulsomely in advance for the art I am about to produce.”

“Poland…”

“Yee?” Poland turned her head and winked at her, not truly upset at all.

“Shush you. Experience not outcomes. We’ll still have sexy fun.”

“Yay!”

“But!” Lithuania stirred herself and swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up. “If we’re both drawing lying down, we’ll need something to lean on. Just a minute.”

She strode off out of the room down the hall.

After half a minute Poland called after her, “I’m putting on clothes, but just cos I’m cold not because I’m unsexy!”

Opening the hall cupboard, Lithuania called back, “You’re never unsexy! Also it really isn’t cold now!”

“Oh yeah! Force of habit I guess.”

When she came back, in carrying two clipboards, Poland was wearing the t-shirt Lithuania had just taken off, and the wolf skin.

“This is nice and warm,” she said. “I Like it.”

“Good.”

“Whaat?”

“What what?”

“What’s your face?”

“Just… you look so precious, dear-heart. My little wolfling.”

Poland hugged the fake fur tighter and made a sound like “gnooow”.

“Here,” said Lithuania, “clipboard, and we’ve got pencils and paper.”

“Uhhh… Why do you have a clipboard from World Expo '92?” Poland asked. “You throw away everything and you keep the weirdest stuff like 90s conference freebies and this wolf thing.”

“Because they’re useful! I keep _useful_ things, you only know about these "weird” things because they’re useful.“

"I bet you have loads of other weird stuff,” Poland continued blithely, holding to her theory. “I think it’s cute. And practically vintage.”

Lithuania sat down on her sofa and rolled her eyes. “You are hardly one to talk about hoarding!”

“This is true.” (Not that Poland had been able to hoard at all consistently throughout much of her life, but she’d been making up for lost time.) “I am judging not lest I be judged.”

“I think it’s cute.”

“What, my adherence to scriptural injunctions or my hoarding?” (Again, she’d give up flippancy when she gave up salty snacks.)

“The whole thing. Everything about you.”

“I’m very naked,” said Poland, flinging the wolf skin off one shoulder and spilling her legs wide open.

“That’s also very nice.”

“Not as naked as you though! With your naked cupboard rummaging. Hm…” She pulled the t shirt off again. “I want you draw me wearing this… beautiful fake wolf skin…”

It had taken long enough, but there was very little else they could do to put off the moment of beginning and putting pencil to paper.

“And you’ll be just… naked as the day the day you were, yeah?” Poland rattled on. “It’s definitely a good look.”

“Why, thank you…”

“Okay so let’s arrange ourselves how to be going to… Got to be slightly comfortable so we can hold the pose.”

They did so.

“And,” Poland continued, “we don’t have to draw the clipboards, right, or… Well, see how it looks?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, let’s… And it doesn’t have to be deadly silent, we can talk a bit if we want?”

“Of course!”

“Okay.”

They didn’t speak for a few minutes though, beyond  _“ahh that wasn’t what I meant to do” “I think I should have drawn you bigger I’m wasting this bit of the paper…”_  Lithuania became very aware of her own breathing as she tried to stay reasonably still, while drawing, while watching Poland. She could see how this could be something very meditative, although leaning on her arm like this probably wasn’t something that she could keep up for hours on end.

She kept getting a flash of Poland’s eyes. Bright and quick, like a watch face catching the light.

She tried to keep her breathing regular. And draw what she saw.

**

“Baby? Do that thing with your mouth again?”

“Thing?”

Poland shifted and the wolfskin moved with her and—

“Oh…”

“ _That_  thing. Liet… You’re so lovely. And I’m really sorry I’m not getting, like, any of this.”

But she chewed her lip, concentrating hard over her drawing, trying her very best.

**

“Speaking of French girls,” Poland said some time later, pausing her pencil, “did France ever write you a poem?”

“Ohhhh. Yes.  A  _couple,_ I think. You?”

“Yeah. It was really sweet actually. If it was anyone else you’d think she pre-wrote and reused them, but…”

“Not she.”

“She also… shipped us pretty fanatically, didn’t she.”

“That was… yeah.”

That was… odd, and would be almost awkward if they weren’t so blisteringly grateful.

“She did all that to get us together…” Lithuania sighed. “…whatever we thought about it!”

“Do you think we were just getting so annoying she wanted both of us off her hands? I probably was.”

“Heh, maybe.”

“Would she have tried so hard if she’d really actually wanted one of us for herself? Or both I guess?”

“She…” Lithuania frowned. It was hard to tell with France. “She… might.”

“Oh geez,” said Poland. “Was she being  _noble_?”

“PROBABLY.”  _Ugh._ “Only she could be that smug about it!”

**

Lithuania had dimmed the lights, and the glow, and the warmth made her remember firelit chambers and candles flickering.

Poland’s skin in candlelight was like soft white gold.

**

That picture of Lithuania in the Castle is way up high. That’s okay, Lithuania thinks.  She isn’t sure about looking into the eyes of the Young Man after all these years.

“They must have a big ladder around somewhere to dust the pictures,” Poland had offered, “Maybe we could borrow.”

“Noo, it’s fine.”

“I was up there when they were reconstructing, you know! On a deckchair on the scaffolding.”

“You painted a ceiling!?”

“Ohh no, just while the painter was on her break. I just like being up high.”

The face in the painting looked somehow surprisingly confident, even from ground level. Lithuania hadn’t realised - or perhaps  _remembered_  - that she came across that way back then.  (Dude you  _did,_  Poland said, not to mention next in the 1800s - totally intimidating. Of course, by then she had been trying.  She used to practise freezing people with a glance.  What other weapons had she left?)

It was a good painting, then: and she didn’t particularly want to look at it. The young man in the picture had grown stern and cold even with those closest to him. She realised now how hard it must have been for Poland.

“I guess I look pretty nice,” she said aloud. “Still don’t know if these paintings were the best use of everyone’s time and funds.”

“Ooh,” Poland exclaimed, “are we having a debate about the utility and cost/benefit of art now?”

“ _No, thank you!”_

And they walked through into the next room which provided a rather cynical and certain answer. It was full of intricate facing portraits of all the European monarchs just before—a mere decade before—they’d got together to break up what remained of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Poland and Lithuania looked round at their fancy faces.

“I’m not mad,” Poland told them sternly, as she always did, “just so _disappointed_ in you guys.”

It was…  something, to walk around the castle again when honest to goodness it looked very very much like it used to, except for the people, in the 1700s, that time of not unmixed blessings.

But you had to see it as a new place too, Poland said. The narrative you had to see rather was the saving and reconstruction of this place by people who were mostly were neither royal nor powerful but who were  _noble_ in the best sense.

They put it back together largely despite the governments of the time who were not… overwhelmingly helpful. That was Poland’s opinion. There was a slight edge to her voice there, or it could be just the usual sore throat she got after some sustained shouting for justice.

**

“Hey… Do you want to take a break a minute and get a drink?”

“What?” Poland seemed dazed a second. “Oh,  _yes_ , let’s.”

Drawing was thirsty work, especially with the heating. It was also intense in a way neither of them had expected, whatever the book had forewarned. Lithuania understood Poland’s dazed look, had been drinking in every look of hers hardly realising what she was doing. They were four feet apart and intimate, touching, aching to be really touching…

“There’s water…” Lithuania called from the kitchen, “blackcurrant… I don’t think we should have alcohol… Coffee?”

“Noo, hot drinks take too long!” Poland called back.

“Coca-Cola? I seem to have Coca-Cola for some reason.”

“Hahaha no, blackcurrant please!”

“Didn’t you used to like Coke?” Lithuania asked, coming back into the room, with two glasses of blackcurrant cordial and no clothes on.

“I used to try to… Thanks.” Poland took a long slow sip and set the drink down on the bedside table. “Wanted to see what it tastes like to kiss America maybe.”

“Ha  _ha_.”

“Did I tell you, one time I drove like private road trip all the way to Norway with a boot full of fizzy drinks.”

“No?? You don’t even like to drive anymore!”

“Eh, it was the 80s, try anything once, specially if it was illegal.”

“Was it?”  

“Probably not as such. I absolutely didn’t find out. Anyway yeah, I downed three cans of coke and threw up under the northern lights.”

“Why?!”

“I ate too much sugar? Oh like why why… Because I could, I guess.”

“Do you know,” Lithuania said, “only Scotland out of the whole world held out against Coca-Cola.”

“Irn Bru is like so weird, what’s even  _in_  it?”

“Don’t ask.”

“I’m going to ask next time I’m there.”

**

Break over, they repositioned themselves. Who knew it would take this long, honestly!  _How’s your arm? How about you baby? Not tooo much longer but I’m OK to keep going if you are…_

**

“I think…” Poland announced, “that I’m kinda getting your hair anyway. Nowhere near doing it justice of course. Hey… do you remember, when we first got back together and… when we went to bed, in my crappy old apartment, you undid your hair and I said…”

“You said it was beautiful,” Lithuania finished, smiling.

“Yeah. It’s so beautiful, Liet. Was that okay? I kinda thought… you looked like it wasn’t quite.”

“Oh…” Lithuania considered.

“Hey, don’t move your pose!”

“Sorry. But yes, back then… I don’t know. I have actually gotten a lot more relaxed with that sort of thing.”

“Mm, the most relaxed person I know… Nah, I’m kidding. I can kind of tell.”

“You’ve helped with that, you know.”

Poland blinked, genuinely surprised. “Me help  _you_  with body confidence stuff? Wow, who’da thunk.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well just… uh. You know, you do know how much trouble I used to have with stuff before you?”

“Po. Sweetheart.”

“Ahh.” Po scratched frustratedly at her paper. “Okay nope this isn’t working.  Hey so, what if we scratch this and take photos?”

"Noo.”

“No, yeah.”

“It wouldn’t look good anyway and…”

“I know, who do you trust, right?”

“—you.”

Poland caught her breath. “B-but very few others.”

“Certainly not the  _phone_  people!!” Lithuania declared.

“Maybe we could get like studio shots done?  Not naked. I mean like you used to get miniatures painted. Why’d we never do that?  I dunno what we’d  _do_  with pictures though…”

“Put them in lockets?”

“Aww. Yeah maybe! I just always think it’s a bit weird when people have like pictures of  _themselves_  on the wall. Except wedding photos. I guess that’s okay.”

“Well we could get a print of that Bacciarelli,” Lithuania suggested innocently.

Poland guffawed. “What, 'Two Knights Embracing’? Yeah that’d certainly cheer up an entire side of the house! Come to think of it why don’t we just move back into Warsaw Castle, I’m sure no one could  _possibly_  object!”

They didn’t, and hadn’t ever, carried each other’s photo in their wallets. It was, basically, some kind of security risk. (Of course, technically so was just about _everything_  these days: if anyone got hold of their text messages things would get extremely awkward extremely fast for all sorts of people.)

**

For the longest time, Poland hadn’t had any sort of photo of Lithuania. At one point she’d assumed she could at least pick up a postcard of that portrait, but apparently not. Anyway it seemed… not quite right to buy that image in a gift shop with out Liet’s knowing.

She could have carried that in her wallet though, and no one would even ask, “Who’s your young man?” because oils weren’t the medium of choice these days. Even if young men were still the socially acceptable gender of choice, if anyone was to ask.  _Still_.

The fact that the artist, drawing from life, thought he was painting a young man and… therefore on some level chose to, what did that mean? Probably nothing. It’s just a painting; people don’t know who it is but they look at it and name it Young Man—basically because of the clothes.

They’d had that talk, walking back to her house in Warsaw.   _Do you think olden days people would even… what would they think? I mean would they be confused about EVERYONE’S gender - would trousers just throw them a blinder? Like the ‘What is this strange foreign garb’ bit from time travel movies? Probably not medieval people: we all wore the gnarliest dresses we could afford back then. Maybe later with the more Structured styles of dress…_

_But I mean. They must have known women had LEGS. Come on._

_It’s a Different Worldview though, you know…_

_Like… the former acceptability of passionate Romantic Friendships between friends of the same sex, you mean?_

Like the permeability of reality and metaphor?

**

Hugging with  _armour_ on _._ For Heaven’s sake, how ridiculous.

The knights in the painting though—you had to admit they were trying their damnedest even so.

**

You can’t live like that though.  _Try_  though you might.

What, years apart [trying to/pretending to] [hate you/be over you] interspersed with one night of sad hugging in the City of Lights?  No not really.

This is much better.

**

Poland chewed the end of her pencil and applied herself to studying the shadow cast by Liet’s right nipple.

**

Lithuania’s pencil hung in the air.

“Alright, I’m thinking about the hair thing,” she said.

“Ah?”

“The last time I wore it down a lot was way back then, in the 1700s.”

“When you sat for that portrait.”

“Yeah.  Can I ask you something?”

“Oh? Yes?”

“Um.  Was it because of me getting… distant, before the partitions, that you starting wearing men’s clothes too?”

Poland felt her pulse high and fast in her throat.  Why did this always happen.  She  _wanted_  to have these serious talks.  But this… hadn’t been what she was expecting. “N-no. No, not really.  That was to join the legions and… I mean I’ve been doing that for… longer than you probably…” She trailed off.

“I know!” said Lithuania hurriedly.  “I guess I thought that was more… for fun, dressing up.  You always seem to… enjoy the fancy aspect.”

“Just because it was frivolous,” Poland managed, “doesn’t mean I wasn’t also really serious about it.  And, really confused, for ages.”

“Honey!” Lithuania leaned forward, almost breaking her pose again.  “Hey, I’m so sorry.”

Poland felt a rush of affection, sweet and heady as blackcurrant cordial.  “It’s okay.”  It  _was_.  “I was all over the place, but I am basically fine about it now, now it  _is_  fun. I wanted to hear about you!”

“I’m also basically fine!”

“Liiiet…”

“I feel silly.  But… Well, I was just thinking what you were saying about hair. Because I remember it sort of sat oddly with me at the time. ‘Beautiful’, you said.  But it seems I’m okay with it now.  More than okay. I suppose I’ve stopped worrying about it, so much.  My, uh,  _image_.”

“I’m glad,” said Poland, “but just know you can talk to me this time round if there’s anything.  I’ll be your new image consultant, or whatever.”

**

Of course,  _image_  perhaps wasn’t quite the word.  Anyway it was hard to define accurately the borders between that term and  _identity_.  
  
They had been Unofficially Together, but less so in the 1700s.  It went sour.  Poland wondered: you said you dressed as a man to be with me in a sociably acceptable way, but _you weren’t with me._ Not really.

They had danced together, but that was about it.  Dancing while the world fell apart around them – yet another picture of the era.

And those splendid smart outfits Poland could now not wear were suddenly like a barrier between them.

It didn’t  _matter_  to her if Lithuania had wanted to or needed to wear these clothes and play this role for some other, inside reason!  Poland, Poland of all people, understood that!  But because they had agreed this was for social acceptability, Poland had to keep up her end of the bargain and so she was trapped in skirts and dresses through one of the suckiest periods of her entire life.  

Not of course that it would have made any difference.  She didn’t really act differently.  Lithuania may well have felt trapped too by then.  Neither of them would have been any more effective and powerful by [presenting / pretending / feeling / being] another gender…  

Still. It had made her  _feel_  her powerlessness particularly hard.

She could hardly express the relief when she got her hands on a lancer’s uniform, and not just because it was objectively speaking the best, most envied and most copied military uniform of the age.

Poland shook herself out of this gloomy train of thought.   _Yeah, okay, so maybe ABSOLUTELY ATROCIOUS external circumstances did have quite a lot to do with the breakdown of our relationship. Fair enough. We needn’t be too hard on ourselves._

I guess, she thought, I’d just like to make sure that now, the world being what it is… we could survive even that together.

**

“I suppose,” Lithuania said, “I’ve just gotten more used to being loved.”

And Poland’s heart squeezed.  

“Po… I think after all this, we must be  _meant_.  Isn’t it crazy—I’ve pretty much stopped worrying about that too.  I’m…” – it’s a big word, brace for it – “secure?”  She laughed a little nervously.  “Anyway, we’re doing the  _book_ , so we should be okay.”

“Yes!!”

“And we were terrible at not being together.  We said we were broken up in the 1800s,” (I said that, she thought,  _I_  did) “but first chance we get we’re—”

“–clutching each other the whole night through and crying into each other’s pillows,” finished Poland. Yes, she remembered that; how could she forget?

**

Maybe if I like shade in some more, Poland thought, this will look elegant and refined, the shapes merely suggested but with perfect ease… Oooor maybe it will look like a smudgy mess. Damn.

What I’ve done is I’ve basically drawn her face in much more detail and darker pencil than the rest of her, thought Lithuania, deciding to firmly re-outline the rest of the picture. Which would be alright if the face actually looked like Poland’s face which it… apart from something about the eyebrows… sadly did not.

Hey ho! Experience not outcome. Nearly done, anyway.

**

The silence was stretching out and Poland wasn’t sure if she wanted to break it.  The way they looked at each had changed.  They weren’t glancing up and down and awkward from face to paper any more.  In fact neither of them had drawn a stroke in good minute.  They were just looking at each other, at each familiar, lovely inch, and smiling.  She felt drained, but good.

“Is this what you thought it would feel like?” Lithuania asked softly, as if reading her mind.

“It is kinda full-on.  The book said it would be, but wow. I can see… Maybe it’s like when you’re in a play.  You don’t really get confused who you are unless you want to, but you might fall in love with your love interest a  _small_  bit.”

“Hn, do you speak from experience?”

“There  _may_  have been some silly revue for the troops with England right at the end of the war then…”

“Let me guess. You were the dashing Polish airman?”

“No actually! I was the blushing  _British_  plucky WAAF girl! My accent was totally that good—and she was the gorgeous American GI!  We weren’t main roles but even so.  We did have to kiss and like… yeah.  I thought about her a lot more after that.”

“How was England’s American performance?” asked Lithuania, sidetracked.

“Surprisingly good!  Though I think it was like… her playing America playing a man…”

“Wheels within wheels…!” Lithuania laughed softly.

“Anyway… what was it like for you, sitting for your portrait?”

“Hmm… Some boring, definitely, and you get very stiff holding it—he was a bit stricter than you about that!  It’s probably different if you sit for a lot of paintings, I hadn’t.  For me it… slowed things down, definitely.  I got used to looking straight at him.  I saw his face and hands in this intimate detail.  I didn’t know him well, so it was more… thinking about closeness and knowledge in the abstract, in the general. Thinking about openness and vulnerability and trust. Without knowing it I was probably thinking about you.”

“Huh…” Poland breathed.  “You know what that does sound like. I was playing piano for Estonia singing.  It was a love song, some dumb thing from a musical… We were watching each off and on to keep in time and she was smiling and I was too, to encourage her and, I dunno, maybe even mouthing the words for her if she forgot.  And I remember—watching the shape of her lips on all the vowels.  How the corners of her mouth went.  Her cheeks, like–cheekbones, how she moved her eyebrows. When she was looking up and away or closing her eyes.  And like.  The song got straight through to me.  I’m not in love with Estonia or anything, but yeah, like you said. All those abstract things, and like,  _love._  It was a good thing I didn’t have to sing too or I would probably have started crying.”

**

“Are we… Are we all done now?”

Once that was voiced they felt unbearably far apart.  How could they not be in each other’s arms.

**

It felt so good to kiss and hold each other again.

“So… was that sexy?”

“Mmm… maybe… a bit?  But.  But  _this_  is…”

They pressed close together, skin to skin, both now wrapped in Poland’s wolf blanket.  They felt at once both that they didn’t want to waste any more time talking and that they still had so much to say.

“It’s been so… it’s like we were so close looking at each other but we couldn’t touch…” Poland tried to explain.

“I know.  And… that was all lovely!  But kind of…  _because_  now we can be like this—”

Poland’s lips were soft and gentle and she gave kisses like flowers dropping petals and she hummed happily, stopped, catching herself, and then giggled, did it again exaggeratedly…

“I feel so dramatic,” she mumbled, “I feel like: don’t leave me, I need more kisses.”

The pictures were put aside for  _objective_  viewing later.  The experience had certainly been the main thing, but they weren’t terrible.  Lithuania thought they were well worth keeping.

**

Later, they sat together in bed in pyjamas and looked over the drawings one more time.  

“I think you look best… upside down.”

“Interesting.  Maybe we could set up some whole decorating concept with upside down pictures.”

“Totally postmodern.”  Poland yawned.  The she said, “Liet, I do wish we could live together properly like we used to.”

“So do I, Po…”

“Mmm—but, I know why we can’t.”

Lithuania squeezed her hand under the covers.

“But all this got me thinking. All those years—we wouldn’t have believed our luck to think we could hang out like this. Just spend the night together whenever we want.  1800s us wouldn’t know how to cope.”

“1800s us absolutely and demonstrably  _did not_  know how to cope.”

“I’m still… I’m still glad that happened, too, though.”

“So am I.”

**

_(18xx)_

“She’s _here_?”

“Yes.” France beamed. “She’s what you’re fighting for after all…”

“Excuse you I’m fighting for my independence—my existence!”

“Ah, but what is life without love?” She was infuriating! _Criminally_ flagrant and romantic, flinging these phrases out without thinking through anything!!

“You can’t just say that and go over my head life this, France!!”

The door opened.

“Pol—“

“Liet.”

France briskly shoved her into the room.

The door closed.

“Restez, mon enfants!” France trilled from without. “You’ve everything you need.  Now, get some sleep, and stay put.  Not a peep out of the two of you all night, understand?”

They stared at each other.

“Just what does she expect us to _do_?” Lithuania said, trying to sound lightly disgusted and not really interested at all but by then Poland had made her mental calculations and run at her with just enough force to knock her back onto the bed when Lithuania let her.

They found each other and clung.  It was a long time before they could even pull apart enough to look at each other’s faces.

There was so much to say they didn’t need to say.  They didn’t say _, Yes I’m here because France seduced me, but you see she had to put in some much effort, and you never even had to try._ They didn’t say, _Oh I know, me too, France is great but she’s not you, not in a million years._

There was nothing to do but stay there and rest.  France had them provided with night things and wash things and supper, and all by servants who knew to knock and when to do so discreetly.

Nothing to do but go to bed.

And very quickly it was all they wanted to do.

Not even to kiss, but to hold.

To share the closeness and softness of soldiers brothers sisters lovers, like they’d always been.  To be unclothed, unranked, together unknown to anyone else.  Together for the first time in an age.  Allowing themselves to be – not feminine because that word doesn’t mean open and vulnerable.  Not feminine and not unfeminine, no kind of presentation at all, only themselves, only two women holding each other in the dark.

_I don’t want to sleep because I don’t want to leave you._

_You won’t.  Stay with me.  Dream me into your dreams._

_Don’t cry…_

_I’m not…_

They did.  

Eventually, they slipped into sleep, and when they awoke, they parted, and when they met again, they fought.  

Even though they kept the image of each other in their dreams.  Even though they tried.

**

You can’t live like that forever.  Thank God,  _thank God_  you don’t have to.

In the end there was no point to regrets.  No need.  They were apart, and they were together, and this was better.  This was better.  Date nights.  Pencil drawings.  Kissing naked on a sofa, wrapped in fake fur.  Better better  _better_.

 **

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [@lithuanias](https://tmblr.co/m-W6pDMvw_BUawJCaDbEBfA) for an imagine I stole, Warsaw Castle for some beautiful pictures ([here’s](http://nyolietpol.co.vu/post/160297933280/get-a-load-of-this-lietpol-lithuanias) the LietPol), the show Bubble Revolution for the inspiration for the Northern Lights story iirc…..  Oh and - this is my usual Christmas fic approach so– although I kinda reference a few things, it is not meticulously fact/history checked, just decorative mostly!! Po probably has a sore throat from being literally outside in the square protesting a fair bit this last year...


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